


The First Testament of Eternity

by beautifultoastdream



Category: Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Afterlife, Ciaphas Cain did not sign up for this nonsense, Comedy, Drama, Gen, The Warp, Tragic lack of Jurgen, Tragicomedy, Unwilling Hero, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:22:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22993906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifultoastdream/pseuds/beautifultoastdream
Summary: Ciaphas Cain is supposed to be dead. Nevertheless, he still has a lot to say. Now where the frak is he, and why can't he seem to run away from the enemy?
Comments: 18
Kudos: 82





	The First Testament of Eternity

**Author's Note:**

> Warhammer 40,000 and all associated settings, characters, concepts and creations are the property of Games Workshop. Ciaphas Cain is the creation of author Sandy Mitchell. This work is not an attempt to profit from those creations or claim ownership; it is a derivative work from which this writer derives no material or immaterial benefit. Please accept this story in the spirit which it is offered--as a sign of affection for the universe and its characters.

“This situation is untenable. I require immediate contact with the managerium!”

-Last words of Magos Kah’Ren, 027 M38

To nobody’s greater surprise than my own, I lived a long life. Despite the interpolation of the 13th Black Crusade, which ruined my plans for a peaceful retirement, many days found me with nothing more urgent than attending meals, dodging responsibilities and recording my own memoirs. I found myself absurdly pleased to watch the progress of my commissar cadets, many of whom went on to follow in my footsteps by not getting shot in the back.

True, I was slowing down. Juvenat treatments make all the difference, but while I kept up my health and my chainsword form, the truth was that I knew I was winding down. While I didn’t look forward to addressing Him on the Golden Throne when I came in front of him—I sometimes had nightmares about Him asking some very pointed questions—I knew I’d done far better than so many other poor sods who served, and was comfortable enough to be grateful.

But I knew the end was approaching when Jurgen died.

He had been my aide for nearly a century, as near as we could reckon with all the warp travel. From first to last he had been dogged, unquestioning, efficient, helpful, and odoriferous. He was never promoted or acknowledged by anyone other than myself and Amberley, and Amberley’s acknowledgment usually came in the form of sending him (with me blubbering in his wake) to some of the most Emperor-forsaken hellholes in the universe. And in the end, he died as he lived: quietly, without fuss. A maid found him cold in his bed one morning. I was chief mourner at his funeral, and it was sparsely attended.

I’ve always been a coward. If there was any ceramite in my soul, I would’ve confessed everything and seen to it that Jurgen was buried as he deserved—not just as a faithful companion, but as the closest thing to the real Hero of the Imperium. But I didn’t. Maybe, even then, I knew that the legend had taken on a life of its own and there was no killing it. Or maybe it was just my desire not to be lynched by the mourners at my aide’s funeral.

Either way, that was the day I knew that my own time was coming to an end. I started putting my affairs in order.

I even thought about destroying the secret memoirs I recorded. True, I would be dead by the time my reputation was ruined, but now that I was facing the end of all things, some part of me was quailing at the idea of leaving behind a legacy of lies and cowardice. In my defense, I was drunk when I thought that. Plenty of bad ideas seem like good ones when you find them at the bottom of an amasec decanter.

But I could feel it coming nearer. My hands sometimes shook, though I buried them in my pockets or pretended to be merely hungover. (Which, to be fair, was sometimes the case.) I was a shade slower every week. The past seemed brighter, the present dimmer, the future unimportant. I caught myself saying “When I was a boy” to one of the other faculty members. Jurgen was gone. The end was coming.

I think Amberley sensed it too, but it never came up. Whenever we met, there would be banter and arch little comments and, thank Him on Earth, a curvaceous Inquisitor in a very tight bodyglove. And out of one.

I might have told her I loved her once. She was asleep. I was holding her, because I couldn’t think of what else could possibly be a better thing to do at that moment, and I said it because it was true and immediately tensed for the knife in my kidneys. But it never came. I resolved to never be so stupid or sentimental again, and fell asleep holding her. She was gone the next morning.

Two days later, I died.

I don’t recall too many of the particulars. I just remember a growing weakness, like someone was draining all my blood away. (They weren’t. I checked.) We were in a meeting, talking about some nonsense involving the budget, and my left arm began to slacken. I rose to my feet, excused myself as politely as I could, turned to the door—and fell. Like an idiot. I heard one of the scriveners calling for a medicus, and then it all faded.

Nobody was more surprised than myself to find that a) there was more after that, and b) it did not involve eternal torment by a host of daemons.

If you’re reading this, you probably think I’m not dead. Amberley clearly had me spirited away for her own nefarious purposes, and I’m narrating this from the inside of a Dreadnaught or the brain implanted in a Skitarii’s body or what have you. It is, after all, a little troublesome to communicate when one is clinically dead.

It’s difficult to explain. But there’s no Dreadnaught, thank the Emperor. I’ve often had to rely on the benefits carried by the commissarial sash and cap, and those would look frankly ridiculous on a Dreadnaught. Although, come to think of it, the enormous cannons would probably make up for the lost dignity. A monstrous ancient machine of death tends to receive some measure of respect quite separate from its garb.

For a while, everything seemed to drift. I felt oddly warm and content, almost lazy, and with no inclination to get up. Once, I thought I saw a flicker of gold through my eyelids, but there seemed to be no adequate reason to open my eyes and actually look. I don’t recall specifically thinking “Ah, yes, I’m dead, and therefore am in glory at the right side of the Emperor, as is reserved for all of His faithful servants.” Come to think of it, I don’t know how the trillions of dead would all fit at the side of the Emperor anyway. Perhaps everything is a lot smaller in the Warp, or there’s a very long waiting line to actually reach Him.

I wasn’t at His side, I can tell you that. I was merely nowhere. I existed in some capacity, but without any reason to inquire further or motivation to do so. I simply was.

But someone called my name, and I snapped awake.

Things seemed so crystal-clear, suddenly. Snow was falling. I was surrounded by a cluster of ferrocrete prefab huts, and the sky was the blue-gray of a familiar perpetual winter. A small settlement on Valhalla. It felt like Valhalla, for all I’d spent so little time on the planet itself.

My palms were tingling, and something seemed to have gripped hold of me. I’m not certain what possessed me, but for one of the few times in my long and inglorious career, I felt the urge to do something stupid deliberately.

Lasfire crackled on the far side of the hab cluster. I could hear the voices now, cutting through the wind. Someone with a strident Valhallan accent was calling for a retreat.

Retreat?

The voice was cut off by a screech, and blood surged through me. My chainsword and laspistol seemed to jump into my hands, and that would have been disconcerting in the most Emperor-damned bizarre way imaginable if I hadn’t been sprinting towards the noise as fast as my legs would carry me.

The snow seemed not to bother me. Hm. All that time with the regiments had paid off at last, it seemed—got my snow legs finally, though it seemed a pity to get them after I’d—I’d what? Couldn’t remember. But someone was in trouble, and it was my job to help them.

I found myself at the edge of the settlement. A thin and ragged defensive line was there, stacked barely three men deep. They were firing on full auto, hosing down the ravenous horde of chitin that roared towards them.

Tyranids. On Valhalla.

Instinct, or experience, gave me a kick up the arse that I didn’t know I was even capable of. Even while part of me screamed to hide, to get to bloody safety, burrow into the snow and never come out, I knew what had to be done. The defensive line was stretched thin because it completely encircled the village. Protecting the civilians—always a good PR move, if they could come out alive from this. But they were fighting a purely defensive battle, unable to withdraw, unable to maneuver. The ‘nids had them completely cut off.

The synapse creatures burned in my vision, a warped place in the world. A sense of wrongness seemed to emanate from them, the psychic equivalent of Jurgen’s socks made manifest. This state of affairs was not acceptable.

I don’t know how I passed the picket line. It seemed to part before me. I raced through the swarm of ‘nids, but they never laid a claw on me. Inwardly, I was nearly pissing myself with sheer terror as I hurtled towards the nearest synapse creature. Outwardly, I had already thumbed my chainsword selector to its highest setting.

The creature howled when it saw me, and lashed out with one clawed forearm. I caught the arm on the blade of my chainsword and ripped the damn thing clean off.

Like a servitor on autopilot, I fell into the cut-and-thrust of battle. Nothing seemed more natural at that moment than to behead the synapse creature and seek out the next one before its corpse even hit the snow. Something was driving me that I had no words for, and it terrified the life out of me, but I had no control over myself.

I lost myself in the melee. The tyranids bayed for my blood—or clicked and screeched, more accurately—but they couldn’t seem to lay a talon on me. I slaughtered five synapse creatures, and the lines around the Valhallan village were falling apart. Chaos reigned. The ‘nid swarm began to retreat as the Valhallans poured withering fire into the disorganized masses of chitin.

It’s impossible to estimate how long I fought. Night fell once—twice, perhaps—but my energy was inexhaustible. I was driven on, like every incarnation of me that ever featured in a cheap holodrama. (Amberley made me watch them all. She loved to see me squirm.) My thoughts were screaming, but my chainsword and laspistol never ran out of power and the ‘nids couldn’t touch me.

Day dawned on a scene of pure slaughter. A Valhallan blizzard whipped up, and even the special cold-world ‘nid forms couldn’t withstand it easily. The Valhallans were on the attack now. The civilians were being evacuated now that shuttles could finally land without being blasted out of the sky.

The strength was draining from my limbs. I trudged back to the village, weapons still in hand, numb to everything and utterly bewildered. I recall speaking once, apologizing to Jurgen for the sock comparison, but he wasn’t there. I was alone and suddenly horribly thirsty.

I found myself drawn to one of the habs near the southern side of the village. The PDF had requisitioned it, to judge by the equipment there, but it was an unusually orderly and efficient sort of PDF squad that must have taken it over. Perhaps they had some veterans in their ranks.

But what they did have, and I had never been so happy to see it, was tanna.

It was cold now. Must have been left out two, three days ago, to judge by how much of the liquid had evaporated. But it was proper tanna, the kind that would mix a delicate spicy flavour with the chemical kick to the jaw that only Valhallan tea could, and my hands shook as I scooped up the tea bowl and drained it in one go. It soothed the burning thirst in my throat like nothing else had in my long life.

Warmth enveloped me, and I sighed in relief. Nothing like it in the world. The numbness was beginning to fade, replaced with a curious sense of satisfaction.

Had I really beheaded a synapse creature in combat? _Five_ of them? How was it _possible?_ But I had no answers. The tanna seemed to have answered all of my probing questions.

The door opened, and a pair of PDF troopers came in. They were weary-looking and worn to rags. One had a viciously bloodied arm wound, clumsily bandaged. But their expressions wore the kind of relief that I myself had felt with a bowl in my hand.

They stopped when they saw me. One began to salute automatically, while the other slapped her hand down. Their eyes were as wide as saucers.

“Good day,” I began to say. “I require—“

But I got no further than that before the darkness and warmth wrapped themselves around me once more. The last thing I saw was the teary-eyed wounded trooper clutching her friend, who was making the sign of the aquila and saying something I couldn’t catch.

* * *

For a long time more, I drifted in the warm dark. The same sense of comfort enveloped me, soothing my instinctive—and very frakking reasonable—concerns, but now some of my consciousness remained with me. I still had no desire to open my eyes or move, but some memories now clung to the edge of awareness, and I found myself turning them over in my mind.

The bloodied trooper had looked familiar. Not overly familiar, but I never forget a face (it’s useful to know who doesn’t like you, after all), and that one rang a bell in some memory I couldn’t place. Not entirely. Perhaps no one I’d known after all. But a relative of one, or a lookalike. I pondered it, but couldn’t find an answer.

I don’t know how long I remained there, but it was less of a span this time. Once more I was drawn from the warm comforting darkness and found myself standing under a snowy sky.

It was day. Instead of a rural habdome cluster, I found myself on the outskirts of a city. I vaguely recognized it. Something about one of the bars on the nearest corner, at any rate, had pleasant associations.

Unfortunately, its current occupants were not in favor of a drink and a nice chat. A hormagaunt was ripping its way free of the storefront, looking spitting mad—no small consideration where ‘gaunts of any stripe were concerned. Perhaps its friends, of whom there were several dozen infesting the cramped street, had stiffed it on the tab.

Fear gripped my guts, but my hand just went to my chainsword. I drew the damn thing, and—and I have always been a liar, but I will swear this  ~~ until my dying day ~~ forever—I flourished it. At the hormagaunts.

“Not on my watch!” I shouted, even while my vocal cords knotted in a terrified attempt to strangle me into silence. “Come and have it, then!”

They swarmed me.

I’ve never been so happy to be puppeteered by an unknown power in all my life. It was beginning to look more and more like one of those cheap holodramas, with how they failed to lay a claw on me. The snow was stained dark with ichor. I quickly lost count of how many fell before me.

The thirst built in my throat as I worked. There seemed to be no end of the ‘nids, but  they couldn’t stop me. They stood between me and the thing I wanted more than anything in the universe—a drink.

At last, I found it.

There was a military encampment in the remnants of a shopping district. I wiped my chainsword and sheathed it, wincing at the knowledge of what the remaining ‘nid blood would do to the leather. But that didn’t matter. The thirst seemed to be eating me up inside. I strolled through the gates, saluting the shellshocked guards, and followed my nose and ravening thirst to the central command post.

“Afternoon,” I said, breezing into the officers’ mess. “Sorry to barge in, but it’s been a very busy day. Lots of work to be done.” I could scarcely force out the usual self-deprecating charm through a throat that was dryer than Tallarn and even less pleasant to endure.

And there it was. A side table set apart, with a curiously formal look about it. There was a place setting of the regimental china (a little cracked), a bottle of amasec—and a fresh bowl of tanna, newly topped up. The mess attendant was just stepping away with the tea urn when I crossed his line of vision, and he turned white and dropped it.

I ignored that and scooped up the tanna bowl. I must have drained the whole thing in one go. The thirst immediately retreated. I turned to say something encouraging to the mess attendant who was pale with fear—a platitude, maybe, and ask for a refill while I was at it—when the warm darkness enveloped me again.

You have doubtless guessed the truth by now, but it took a shockingly long time to become clear to me. Those interludes in the warm dark were like a week’s sleep on a lazy vacation planet:  refreshin g  but mind-numbing, discouraging any serious contemplation.  But pieces started to click together at last. Each time I was drawn back into the real world, more seemed to awaken inside me.  


As time passed, I began to see a few more of them. Familiar faces. Some in the lines of battle, some in photographs on the walls of destroyed buildings. Once, I saw one in the piles of the dead, and for once my fury matched the nameless force that drove me to act like a damn idiot over and over again. I couldn’t put any names to them, but there was something there.

One thing was clear: the ‘nids were on Valhalla. Once or twice I thought I had been called somewhere else, to some other battlefront, but each time it was Valhallans fighting there. (And what Munitorum frakhead had stationed a regiment of Valhallans on Terra frakking Rubicus? Heat stroke must have killed more than the ‘nids.)  Each time there was that tug out of the warm dark, the ludicrous drive to destroy the enemies of the Imperium in complete contravention of my own sanity and self-preservation, and that growing, inescapable thirst for tanna. 

The next time I landed on Valhalla, the situation was changing. The ‘nids were being pushed back. But there were genestealers out now, targeting potential weak spots. The implanted victims could be spotted and there was no time to breed another generation of hybrids, not in such a short time—but they still knew pass codes and could gain the ‘nids entrance to sealed bunkers. 

But they couldn’t hide from me. The implanted were black holes in my sight, warped and twisted. Dead men walking. I singled them out from the crowds and granted them the Emperor’s Peace, as swiftly and painlessly as I could.

The Valhallans were winning. Tyranid pockets grew smaller and smaller. I could feel it all, now, even when wrapped in the darkness: the surging triumph of the Valhallans and their determination underneath it, to cleanse their homeworld as they’d cleansed it of the greenskins.  I was damned proud of them, for all I couldn’t match their martial zeal or real faith. Each bowl of tanna tasted a little better than the last.

One dark night, I wiped my chainsword again (this was becoming ridiculous. How was the sheath not destroyed by now?) and strolled into the base of the Creed’s Peak PDF, seeking my usual bowl of tea. It wasn’t in the mess this time. I followed my nose—and my ravening thirst—towards the officers’ quarters, where something told me my reward was waiting. Bloody good thing, too, because I’d slaughtered a frakking hive tyrant and was still in a state of deep confusion and disbelief. Maybe I could persuade them to cut it with amasec, this time, before the darkness called me back again.

I found it in the captain’s office. She was an old, old woman, and from the look of it, she’d had her share of juvenat treatments before she got to that stage. Her face was familiar, though I couldn’t place it. I was too focused on the tanna sitting on her desk.

“Commissar,” she rasped.

I turned. It was the first time any of them had spoken to me. The thirst seemed to be mummifying my throat, and I was drawn to the tanna like Private Ehrlsen to a bad decision, but I somehow managed to crane my neck and focus on her.

She was saluting. Her hand shook, but she was staring at me with something like wonder, and she was saluting. There was a hiss and click as she breathed. Some kind of augmetics.

_Augmetic lungs,_ my brain helpfully supplied.

My throat was killing me, but I managed to force the word out. “Drere.”

Janny bloody Drere. How was she still alive? How old was she? How old was  _I?_ Why couldn’t I stop my hands reaching for the frakking tea bowl while I tried to figure all of this out?

I took the tanna, my hands shaking as I struggled not to drink. She stared at me with shining eyes, something like the kid she’d been when she first got carved up by the ambull in the tunnels under Simia Orichalcae. It felt like I could see the faith inside her—potent and steely, driving her to keep fighting even when her husband was long dead and her planet polluted with the bodies of the ‘nids. I looked at her and I could see the entire story of her life, unreeled before me like one of the schola progenium’s endless scrolls, and it scared the Warp out of me.

Her gaze was locked on mine. I had to get away. I drank the tea and sighed in relief as the darkness took me again.

But I couldn’t forget it. Now I was dreading it. Dreading the next summons, the next fight, the next bowl of tea and the next risk of a familiar face.

Drere had been younger than me. I never knew what happened to her after I’d left the 597 th . The possibility of her somehow surviving to advanced old age had never occurred to me: quite aside from the mortality rate among Guardsmen, she seemingly had no money or connections that would give her access to juvenat treatments. But looking her in the eye, I had seen the span of her whole life: the unexpected inheritance, her marriage to Vorhees,  her determination to keep fighting when he had died young. Her insistence on serving Valhalla however she could, born out of hard grit and a memory of blood in an icy tunnel. 

There had been a message from a distant outpost, giving hope. Then another. The rumors began to spread.

_He fought across Perlia for a drink of tanna. Perhaps if we offer his spirit some now, he’ll come to us again._

In the warm dark of the Warp, wrapped up by forces I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, I pressed my hands to my face and fought the urge to scream.

“I’m a frakking Imperial saint!”

If Amberley ever found out, she was going to piss herself laughing. 


End file.
